Dave Appell, the man who co-wrote Let's Twist Again for Chubby Checker, has died, aged 92. The Philadelphia, Pennsylvania songwriter-producer, who also penned 1960s rock ’n’ roll hits Limbo Rock and Mashed Potato Time, passed away on Tuesday (18Nov14).
Appell also produced the Tony Orlando and Dawn hits Knock Three Times and Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree.
He was one third of the hitmaking team of Appell, Mann & Lowe with lyricist Kal Mann and fellow songwriter-producer Bernie Lowe.
Appell also scored hits like Mexican Hat Rock as the frontman for The Applejacks in the 1950s. The band appeared in the film Don’t Knock the Rock alongside Bill Haley & the Comets and Little Richard.

FOX
As the summer reaches its peak and the Fourth of July swiftly approaches, it's time to look back on the six months of 2014 that have passed in order to evaluate where we stand in terms of pop culture. But while most lists and articles choose to only focus on the best, most exciting, and most memorable moments that have occured in television and movies so far this year, we feel this retrospective wouldn't be complete without a look back on all of the worst that Hollywood has offered us in 2014. From unfunny, offensive premieres to movies that are held together by crude jokes and slow-motion sword fights to the once great shows that have seen a dramatic decline in quality, there's plenty to repress about the year in entertainment. Allow us to refresh your memory...
Dads Nobody had high expectations for Dads. It was a live-action Seth MacFarlane comedy about two immature best friends whose fathers move back in with them. It was probably never going to be a great sitcom. And yet, nobody expected just how terrible Dads actually turned out to be, an unfunny combinations of racism, misogyny and the way it turned two great character actors (Martin Mull and Peter Reigert) into walking fart jokes. Thankfully, Fox decided to put everyone out of their misery by cancelling the show in May, even though everyone blocked it from their minds well before that.
The Other Woman The Other Woman had everything it needed to be a success: two talented, likeable comedias in Leslie Mann and Cameron Diaz, a well-worn dramatic trope at the center of its plot, an attractive leading men, Nicki Minaj, and an early summer release date that ensured it wasn’t competing with any major blockbusters. Unfortunately, it also had a terrible, unfunny, insultingly stupid script that managed to somehow tell a story about women who bond over their cheating significant other in the most misogynistic fashion imaginable. Truly, The Other Woman did the impossible.
Sherlock, Season 3 For a while, it seemed as if the BBC’s modern adaptation of the classic Sherlock Holmes stories could do no wrong. They were smart, well-written, well-acted, and well-directed; more like mini-movies than a television series. But then the third season premiered, and instead of the sharply crafted mystery we had come to expect, we got a pandering, oddly-paced, awkwardly-written show that shunted the cases to the side in favor of plotholes and fangirl fodder. The fact that we had to wait three years for Sherlock to make such a disappointing return only compounded all of our issues into a giant letdown of a season.
Super Fun Night After her breakout roles in Pitch Perfect and Bridesmaids, America wanted nothing more than to spend more time with Rebel Wilson. Unfortunately, they changed their minds once her TV show, Super Fun Night, premiered. Everything that they loved about Wilson – the accent, the confidence, the charm, the wit, the jokes, the sweetness – was gone, and in its place was an painfully awkward, unfunny show with a painfully awkward, unlikable protagonist with an American accent. Luckily, Pitch Perfect 2 is set to hit theaters soon, at which point everyone will forget that Super Fun Night ever happened, and our perfect image of Wilson as the ideal best friend will be restored.
That Awkward Moment Like The Other Woman, That Awkward Moment is a marvel. It’s a film that takes another familiar premise (in this case, friends making a pact to stay out of relationships, only to fall in love) and three of the most charming, talented and good looking young actors in Hollywood (Zac Efron, Miles Teller, and Michael B. Jordan) and squanders its potential on bad voice overs and boner jokes. Also, Efron’s character might have been a sociopath. Regardless, That Awkward Moment felt like less of a disappointment than an insult to intelligent audiences everywhere.
Netflix
House of Cards, Season 2 If we were to ask you what the worst thing about the first season of House of Cards was, chances are you’d say the convoluted policy talk, Francis petty feuds, or or the unrealistic way he managed to get away with everything. Unfortunately, showrunner Beau Willimon disagreed with the rest of us, and made those three elements the focus of the entire second season. He must have assumed that we’d be too distracted by Kevin Spacey chewing the scenery to mind the boring, long-winded and convoluted discussions of foreign policy, the comic idiocy of President Walker, the far-fetched plots designed to conveniently dispose of characters who asked questions, and the fact that Francis had turned from a manipulative power player into a full-blown cartoon villain. We wouldn’t be surprised if next season, he wore a top hat and a monocle and twirled his mustache during his asides to the camera.
The Legend of Hercules If you were in the Twilight films and your name isn’t Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, or Anna Kendrick, your biggest career challenge is overcoming the stigma of being a supporting player in the most devisive movie series of all time. So we don’t blame Kellan Lutz for branching out into leading man territory with The Legend of Hercules. How was he to know that the film would be stupid, nonsensical and only tangentially related to its source material? Or that it would be a cheap-looking, boring, plodding mess that lacked any sense of fun? Really, he was just trying to be something other than Emmett Cullen for a change.
A Million Ways to Die in the West Seth MacFarlane has not had a great year so far. First, critics reacted to Dads as if someone had dumped a pile of hot garbage on their freshly mowed lawn, and then he made A Million Ways to Die in the West, a comedy that basically shot Blazing Saddles in the face. Terribly unfunny, over-reliant on references and repeated jokes and a waste of a stellar cast, the worst thing about the film was the fact that it completely lacked MacFarlane’s voice, which, while not for everyone, at least has a distinctive comedic perspective. At least there’s always Ted 2, right?
I Wanna Marry Harry Sometimes, a network isn’t just content to put crap on television to fill airtime during the summer. Sometimes, they want to provoke a reaction – any reaction – and so they come up with a show that crushes your soul, and destroys any lingering hope you might have had in not only the future of television, but also society as a whole. In 2014, that show was I Wanna Marry Harry, a festering sore disguised as a reality TV competition in which girls are tricked into competing for the affections of a potato with legs. And that’s the nicest way I could possibly describe that show.
The Cancelation of Enlisted What hurts the most about losing Enlisted, Fox’s funny, original and criminally underrated show isn’t the fact that the network made it impossible for the show to gain a following and then used its lack of ratings as an excuse for cancelation. It’s not that we lost a wonderful, well-written show that could be both hysterically funny and incredibly moving. It wasn’t even that the world never got a chance to appreciate the talents of the wonderful ensemble, all of whom created hilarious, realistic, delightful characters. No, what hurts the most about the decision to cancel Enlisted is that it was announced in the same week that I Wanna Marry Harry premiered. Never has a metaphorical slap in the face felt so painful.
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Cinedigm via Everett Collection
Looks like Brie Larson is going to break everyone's hearts once more. The Short Term 12 star has landed the lead role in Room, the big screen adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s best-selling novel about a woman and her young son trapped in a single room for years. Room is the fourth high-profile role that Larson has landed recently, after Judd Apatow's Trainwreck, Matthew Quick's Silver Linings Playbook follow-up The Good Luck of Right Now, and Mark Wahlberg's crime drama The Gambler. With such a diverse list of projects on her plate for the near future, it seems as if Larson has a number of possible career trajectories available to her. Will she choose to stick with the quiet indies that have brought her so much acclaim thus far? Will she give up dramas for a while and embrace her comedic side? Is there a major role in a big-budget franchise in her future?
We've taken a look at Larson's upcoming projects and used them to predict where we see her career headed if they become big successes. No matter what happens, you should get to know Larson's work now, so that you can brag that you knew about her first.
Room Although it’s hard to predict what direction Room will take (the novel is told from the perspective of five-year-old son), it’s clear that Larson has a difficult, emotionally intense role in front of her. We could see her career following in the footsteps of Marion Cotillard, whose Hollywood breakthrough was similarly complicated and layered, and who has gone on to play many more dark and complex characters. Since Larson was rumored to be in the running for a role in the upcoming Terminator film, she should have no problem landing a role in a major franchise, like Cotillard, although we see her in one of the more inventive big-budget films. Perhaps something along the lines of Inception? A Cotillard-like career would also allow her to continue to work in smaller indie films, as well as to mix her serious, weighty projects with lighter fare, in much the same way that Cotillard followed La Vie en Rose with Nine and Midnight in Paris with Rust and Bone. And if we don’t see Larson at the Oscars for Room, then it should only be a matter of time before she, like Cotillard, takes home a trophy.
Trainwreck With Judd Apatow at the helm and Amy Shumer writing and starring, Trainwreck is both the only outright comedy and the most mainstream of her upcoming films. Larson’s proven that she can do comedy well, having played supporting roles in 21 Jump Street and United States of Tara, so it wouldn’t be much of a surprise if her breakthrough came about as the result of her showcasing those comedic chops. From there, she could stick to comedies, a la Leslie Mann, whose supporting roles in Apatow’s projects have allowed her to transition into carrying films on her own. But we think it’s more likely that Larson would emulate someone like Sandra Bullock, who has managed to do both comedy and drama. Like Bullock, Larson would probably stick to starring in big-budget comedies for some time (we see her taking on slightly weirder projects like The Heat rather than becoming a rom com darling), before finding the perfect dramatic role to help her transition back into more serious work. Thus far, Larson has managed to balance her roles in a similar fashion to Bullock, so it shouldn’t be too difficult for her to find a way to keep a foot in both worlds. Besides, she's so talented and charming that she could easily become the successor to Bullock’s “America's Sweetheart” title, as well as being a future Best Actress contender.
The Good Luck of Right Now Based on the novel by Matthew Quick, who wrote Silver Linings Playbook, The Good Luck of Right Now is a dramedy about four outsiders who come together to form an unlikely family as they deal with pain, loss and major tragedies. Larson would play a librarian who believes herself to have been abducted by aliens, who falls in love with Bartholomew, a 30-something man who is dealing with the death of his mother by writing letters to Richard Gere. The Good Luck of Right Now is a quirky comedy, with a script by Mike White, and so we could see her following in the footsteps of the queen of independent cinema, Parker Posey. Posey has had a long career that ranges from comedies to dramas and small, independent films to big, studio ventures, and since Larson seems to be interested in working on a wide range of projects, including Dazed and Confused and the comedies of Christopher Guest, it seems likely that she might be headed on a similar career path. Posey is also every popular show's go-to guest star, with a particularly memorable appearance on Louie and Parks and Recreaction. With stints on Community and The Kroll Show under her belt, it seems like Larson might already be following in her footsteps. Plus, Larson's got the "endearingly quirky" thing down, so she should have no trouble becoming Hollywood's new indie darling.
The Gambler In this remake of the 1974 James Caan film, Larson will play the female lead opposite Mark Wahlberg, who will take on the role of a professor whose gambling habits threaten to ruin the lives of him and everyone he care about when he gets in over his head with some loan sharks. It’s a dark, gritty supporting role, and we don't see Larson being brushed off as just another "supportive girlfriend-type." Instead, we predict it could set her on an Amy Adams-type career path, as Adams managed to transform another "girlfriend" role in The Fighter into one of the most compelling characters in the film. Although Adams was a more established actress at the time, there are a lot of similarities between her and Larson, from their breakthrough roles in quiet, realistic indies (Junebug for Adams and Short Term 12 for Larson) to their penchant for goofy, over-the-top comedies (Talladega Nights and The Muppets vs. 21 Jump Street) it seems an apt comparison. Emulating Adams would allow Larson to continue to take darker, serious roles in both big-budget and indie films without having to totally abandon her comedic side, and since critics are already predicting that she will soon be an Oscar fixture, Adams seems like an ideal career role-model for Larson.
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Netflix
The war for LGBTQ equality still rages on in America... mostly in Arizona. But luckily, television is making that struggle a little easier. More balanced and accurate portrayals of people under the rainbow flag are starting to crop up. This helps the community both on and off-screen. Openly gay actors like Zachary Quinto, Neil Patrick Harris, and Ellen Page can play straight. And straight actors like Cameron Monaghan, Andre Braugher, and Sara Ramirez can play for the other team. And LGBT actors like Laverne Cox and Jonathan Groff can play characters a little closer to themselves.
Television is making some pretty major political moves by exploring more than just character whose sexual identities are more complex than the labels of gay and lesbian. Cox has used her role on Orange Is the New Black to spread awareness of transphobia and other issues affecting the transgender community. There also is a movement towards exploring queer sexuality. Distinctly different from bisexuality, queer people don’t define their romantic partners by gender, instead embracing a fluid sexuality. There are even roles of LGBTQ young adults and children that allow these parties to be themselves, perhaps paving the way for boys who paint their nails and wear makeup to be free from bullying and discrimination.
Here are a few of our favorite, and arguably some of the most influential, LGBTQ characters on television. They show there is a wide spectrum of sexual preferences and gender identities but ultimately we are all people.
GALLERY: Our Favorite LGBTQ Characters on Television
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DreamWorks
For the bulk of every Rocky and Bullwinkle episode, moose and squirrel would engage in high concept escapades that satirized geopolitics, contemporary cinema, and the very fabrics of the human condition. With all of that to work with, there's no excuse for why the pair and their Soviet nemeses haven't gotten a decent movie adaptation. But the ingenious Mr. Peabody and his faithful boy Sherman are another story, intercut between Rocky and Bullwinkle segments to teach kids brief history lessons and toss in a nearly lethal dose of puns. Their stories and relationship were much simpler, which means that bringing their shtick to the big screen would entail a lot more invention — always risky when you're dealing with precious material.
For the most part, Mr. Peabody &amp; Sherman handles the regeneration of its heroes aptly, allowing for emotionally substance in their unique father-son relationship and all the difficulties inherent therein. The story is no subtle metaphor for the difficulties surrounding gay adoption, with society decreeing that a dog, no matter how hyper-intelligent, cannot be a suitable father. The central plot has Peabody hosting a party for a disapproving child services agent and the parents of a young girl with whom 7-year-old Sherman had a schoolyard spat, all in order to prove himself a suitable dad. Of course, the WABAC comes into play when the tots take it for a spin, forcing Peabody to rush to their rescue.
Getting down to personals, we also see the left brain-heavy Peabody struggle with being father Sherman deserves. The bulk of the emotional marks are hit as we learn just how much Peabody cares for Sherman, and just how hard it has been to accept that his only family is growing up and changing.
DreamWorks
But more successful than the new is the film's handling of the old — the material that Peabody and Sherman purists will adore. They travel back in time via the WABAC Machine to Ancient Egypt, the Renaissance, and the Trojan War, and 18th Century France, explaining the cultural backdrop and historical significance of the settings and characters they happen upon, all with that irreverent (but no longer racist) flare that the old cartoons enjoyed. And oh... the puns.
Mr. Peabody &amp; Sherman is a f**king treasure trove of some of the most amazingly bad puns in recent cinema. This effort alone will leave you in awe.
The film does unravel in its final act, bringing the science-fiction of time travel a little too close to the forefront and dropping the ball on a good deal of its emotional groundwork. What seemed to be substantial building blocks do not pay off in the way we might, as scholars of animated family cinema, have anticipated, leaving the movie with an unfinished feeling.
But all in all, it's a bright, compassionate, reasonably educational, and occasionally funny if not altogether worthy tribute to an old favorite. And since we don't have our own WABAC machine to return to a time of regularly scheduled Peabody and Sherman cartoons, this will do okay for now.
If nothing else, it's worth your time for the puns.
3/5
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Lions Gate via Everett Collection
When we last left our heroes, they had conquered all opponents in the 74th Annual Hunger Games, returned home to their newly refurbished living quarters in District 12, and fallen haplessly to the cannibalism of PTSD. And now we're back! Hitching our wagons once again to laconic Katniss Everdeen and her sweet-natured, just-for-the-camera boyfriend Peeta Mellark as they gear up for a second go at the Capitol's killing fields.
But hold your horses — there's a good hour and a half before we step back into the arena. However, the time spent with Katniss and Peeta before the announcement that they'll be competing again for the ceremonial Quarter Quell does not drag. In fact, it's got some of the film franchise's most interesting commentary about celebrity, reality television, and the media so far, well outweighing the merit of The Hunger Games' satire on the subject matter by having Katniss struggle with her responsibilities as Panem's idol. Does she abide by the command of status quo, delighting in the public's applause for her and keeping them complacently saturated with her smiles and curtsies? Or does Katniss hold three fingers high in opposition to the machine into which she has been thrown? It's a quarrel that the real Jennifer Lawrence would handle with a castigation of the media and a joke about sandwiches, or something... but her stakes are, admittedly, much lower. Harvey Weinstein isn't threatening to kill her secret boyfriend.
Through this chapter, Katniss also grapples with a more personal warfare: her devotion to Gale (despite her inability to commit to the idea of love) and her family, her complicated, moralistic affection for Peeta, her remorse over losing Rue, and her agonizing desire to flee the eye of the public and the Capitol. Oftentimes, Katniss' depression and guilty conscience transcends the bounds of sappy. Her soap opera scenes with a soot-covered Gale really push the limits, saved if only by the undeniable grace and charisma of star Lawrence at every step along the way of this film. So it's sappy, but never too sappy.
In fact, Catching Fire is a masterpiece of pushing limits as far as they'll extend before the point of diminishing returns. Director Francis Lawrence maintains an ambiance that lends to emotional investment but never imposes too much realism as to drip into territories of grit. All of Catching Fire lives in a dreamlike state, a stark contrast to Hunger Games' guttural, grimacing quality that robbed it of the life force Suzanne Collins pumped into her first novel.
Once we get to the thunderdome, our engines are effectively revved for the "fun part." Katniss, Peeta, and their array of allies and enemies traverse a nightmare course that seems perfectly suited for a videogame spin-off. At this point, we've spent just enough time with the secondary characters to grow a bit fond of them — deliberately obnoxious Finnick, jarringly provocative Johanna, offbeat geeks Beedee and Wiress — but not quite enough to dissolve the mystery surrounding any of them or their true intentions (which become more and more enigmatic as the film progresses). We only need adhere to Katniss and Peeta once tossed in the pit of doom that is the 75th Hunger Games arena, but finding real characters in the other tributes makes for a far more fun round of extreme manhunt.
But Catching Fire doesn't vie for anything particularly grand. It entertains and engages, having fun with and anchoring weight to its characters and circumstances, but stays within the expected confines of what a Hunger Games movie can be. It's a good one, but without shooting for succinctly interesting or surprising work with Katniss and her relationships or taking a stab at anything but the obvious in terms of sending up the militant tyrannical autocracy, it never even closes in on the possibility of being a great one.
3.5/5
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Character actor Dennis Farina, best known for his stint as Det. Joe Fontana on Law &amp; Order, has died of a blood clot in his lung, the Los Angeles Times confirms. He was 69.
Though he had made a late-career shift into TV, Farina, born in 1943, had many memorable big screen roles in movies like Midnight Run, Get Shorty, Out of Sight, and Saving Private Ryan. Unlike so many actors, his tough-guy persona was no act. Farina, a Chicago native, originally patrolled the Windy City as a cop before catching the acting bug in his late 30s. That experience enabled him to bring a gruff, world-weariness to characters like Lt. Mike Torello on NBC's two-season cop drama Crime Story, which has become a cult favorite since its cancellation in 1988.
Crime Story was produced by Michael Mann, who had cast Farina in his movies Thief and Manhunter and would continue to be a frequent collaborator until the end: Farina's last role was as Dustin Hoffman's chauffeur and "muscle" on HBO's Luck in 2012, a show co-created by Mann.
But it's his work on Law &amp; Order that gained him a whole new following. In 2004, following the death of Jerry Orbach, who'd played the iconic character Lenny Briscoe for over a decade, Law &amp; Order was in jeopardy of coming to a screeching halt. Farina stepped in and, though he couldn't match Orbach's sense of streetwise intellectualism, opting for instead a more bullish, hard-charging approach, arguably saved the show. Just check out his naturalistic, unfussy style in this scene from Law &amp; Order:
Farina is survived by three sons, six grandchildren, and his wife of 35 years, Marianne Cahill.
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More: Might There Be a Meeting of the Parents on ‘New Girl’ Cory Monteith Died of Heroin, Alcohol, Coroner Says Richard Matheson Dies: A Tribute to the ‘I Am Legend’ Author
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Bridesmaids is arguably not only one of the most successful comedies of the last decade — grossing $288 million worldwide — but one of the most artistically satisfying as well. That's why Kristen Wiig's first solo vehicle snce, Girl Most Likely, released this weekend in only 353 theaters and subject to atrocious reviews, is such a shock. In fact, we'd argue that it joins the following list of stinkers as among the worst follow-ups ever made. These are 10 other films that turned gold into s**t.
1. The Last Movie (1971)
Dennis Hopper followed up his counter-culture smash Easy Rider, a generation-defining road movie for the ages, with this movie about a Hollywood stunt coordinator working on a Western in Peru who joins a Native American community after one of his production colleagues is killed. Told via a non-linear chronology, complete with heavy use of jump cuts, The Last Movie is an ambitious study in the nebulous divide between fiction and reality...but it totally confused its 1971 audience and reeks of self-indulgence. That's why it's never even been released on DVD.
2. Godzilla (1998)
Roland Emmerich made a perfect summer movie in 1996 with Independence Day. So he hoped to enshrine his status as a destroyer of worlds with a remake of the most defining entry in the urban destruction porn genre: Godzilla. What we got was Michael Lerner playing Mayor Ebert, a mocking sendup of Roger Ebert, and two hours of Matthew Broderick frantically avoiding being crushed by the lizard's giant feet.
3. Southland Tales (2006)
Donnie Darko was an oddity, albeit an intriguing and eventually successful one for director Richard Kelly in 2002. But his follow-up replaced "odd" with "bats**t crazy," totally bombing — even if, like other quasi-rehabilitated failures before it, such as Heaven's Gate, it has its defenders.
4. Righteous Kill (2008)
For Righteous Kill, the 13-years-in-the-making reteaming of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino after 1995's Heat, they traded Michael Mann and Jon Voight for Jon Avnet and 50 Cent. That pretty much says it all.
5. Quantum of Solace (2008)
Casino Royale was the best Bond movie in years. It washed away the decadent CGI taint of Die Another Day and introduced a 007 more in keeping with Ian Fleming's original vision. But its follow-up Quantum of Solace was an incoherent mess harmed by a script that languished during the 2007 writers' strike.
6. Jennifer's Body (2009)
People wanted to see Diablo Cody put words like "this is one doodle that can't be undid, home skillet" in Rainn Wilson's mouth in Juno, not put Megan Fox at the center of an air-quotey horror movie.
7. Cars 2 (2011)
Now the original Cars (2006) has its detractors for sure, but even its biggest naysayers wouldn't suggest that it interrupted Pixar's uncanny 1995-2010 winning streak. That movie would be Cars 2, which cast its titular autos in a ridiculous Japan-set spy caper. The studio hasn't recovered since, following up that disappointment with even more disappointing flicks like Brave and Monsters University.
8. To the Wonder (2013)
Terrence Malick drew near-universal praise for his transcendent tone poem The Tree of Life in 2011. But though its follow-up shares much in common with The Tree of Life — Hollywood actors reduced to mythic abstractions, breathy voiceover, twirling — To the Wonder felt like a clichéd regurgitation
9. The Internship (2013)
Wedding Crashers was a raunchy, go-for-broke bromance extravaganza. But eight years and the impulse toward whitewashing Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn down to a safe PG-13 sensibility in their reteaming as fortysomething Google interns were not kind.
10. Only God Forgives (2013)
As a stuntdriver turned getaway man cruising the streets of L.A., Ryan Gosling was hypnotically watchable in Drive. Needless to say, he is less so as a vengeful drug dealer in Bangkok in Only God Forgives.
Follow Christian Blauvelt on Twitter @Ctblauvelt | Follow Hollywood.com on Twitter @Hollywood_com
More: REVIEW: ‘Girl Most Likely’ Will Make You Wish You’d Rented ‘Bridesmaids’ Instead Every Shirtless Second of Darren Criss in the ‘Girl Most Likely’ Trailer 3 Clips from ‘Girl Most Likely’ Will Leave You Smiling
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With the spotlight now off Kathryn Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty (her controversial film about the hunt for, and eventual killing of Osama bin Laden, lost momentum during awards season and won only one technical Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards), the Senate Intelligence Committee has backed off from their investigation of the movie.
RELATED: 'Zero Dark Thirty' Investigation: Does It Pique Your Interest in the Film?
Back in January, after receiving complaints from top-ranking senators, including John McCain, about the torture scenes in the film, the Senate Intelligence Committee began a probe regarding the contacts used by Bigelow and Zero Dark Thirty screenwriter Mark Boal regarding the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques”. The investigation was aimed to discover whether or not officials gave Bigelow and Boal “inappropriate” access to top. secret information.
RELATED: The Torture Uproar Surrounding 'Zero Dark Thirty'
According to Reuters, as of Monday, "the Senate Intelligence Committee has closed its inquiry into the filmmakers' contacts with the Central Intelligence Agency." An anonymous source told the outlet the committee gathered more information from the CIA, Bigelow, and Boal and that no further steps will be taken. Another source revealed that the "CIA did not tell the filmmakers 'enhanced interrogations' led to bin Laden. Instead, the agency helped develop characters in the film." (There is, however, a separate investigation by the Pentagon regarding information given to the filmmakers surrounding the details of bin Laden's death).
Bigelow, who was snubbed in the Best Director category at the 2013 Oscars, has publicly stated that Zero Dark Thirty and its depiction of torture, "is not endorsement." Interestingly enough, those very torture scenes in question which some deemed "too graphic" and sparked this uproar, was described by former SEAL Team Six member, Don Mann to Hollywood.com as "grossly over-exaggerated."
RELATED: 'Zero Dark Thirty': Why It Wasn't 'Too Soon'
[Photo Credit: Columbia Pictures]

"Too soon!" It was a literal cry that rang out when trailers for Paul Greengrass' United 93 — an unflinching dramatization of the events that unfolded aboard the hijacked United Airlines flight that crashed in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001 — played in theaters. As Newsweek reported, the response to the preview was so upsetting to movie patrons in New York City, that it was pulled from certain theaters. The Oscar-nominated United 93 was released in 2006, five years after the tragic events of 9/11, but for many, the nerve of that terrible day in American history still felt too raw.
While United 93 was a cinematic achievement (it has a staggering 91% on Rotten Tomatoes), the hard-to-stomach drama only made $31 million at the domestic box office. That same year, Oliver Stone's notably less critically beloved World Trade Center did better at the U.S. box office, bringing in $70 million. But, with the exception of Michael Moore's anti-Bush administration documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 in 2004 (the Palme d'Or winner made $222 million worldwide), no post-9/11 narrative film has been able to appease both wary critics and audiences alike.
RELATED: 'Zero Dark Thirty' Takes Top Honors At 2013 Writers Guild Awards
They have either been too divisive (Reign Over Me, and, of course, Stephen Daldry's 2012's unexpected Best Picture nominee Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which earned just $31 million at the box office and has a 47% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, where it's described as "treacly and pretentious") or too exploitative (see: Robert Pattinson's Remember Me) in the past decade to accomplish that. Leave it to Kathryn Bigelow — who turned a suspenseful, if uneasy film about the Iraq War into a Best Picture winner (The Hurt Locker) — to turn the tables once again.
Just 17 months after the killing the al-Qaeda leader, which executed the attacks on America on 9/11 Osama bin Laden, Bigelow's Oscar-nominated Zero Dark Thirty was released. To date, it has made over $88 million, was one of the best critically received films of 2012 (it wound up on over 200 Top 10 lists), not to mention one of the most talked-about and debated films in post-9/11 cinema.
Paul Dergarabedian, Hollywood.com's box office analyst, says the reason why Zero Dark Thirty has clicked with audiences and has the potential to cross the $100 million mark is actually quite simple. "I think because of what this event is and what it represents — the capturing and killing of bin Laden — is one of redemption, of national pride, of hope for the future," he says. "Movies that were related to an unresolved issue and how it effected the U.S., that's not escapist entertainment."
"But, in its most pure form, Zero Dark Thirty is [about] escapism and redemption and validation," Dergarebedian adds. "I think that's why it's doing so well and I think the timing for this is better. It's been over a decade, there is enough time and space between 9/11 ... I think Zero Dark Thirty is just the right movie at the right time."
RELATED: Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar Snub
Maura Spiegel, a professor of American Studies and English at Columbia University, who agrees that Zero Dark Thirty touched on the wish fulfillment aspect of our collective movie going psyche, adds, "We are pretty hungry to understand this war and understand who these people are. To me, one of the primary differences between this story of bin Laden, and 9/11 is that we're not grieving bin Laden's death. The sense that this was an American victory story, as opposed to a tragedy."
But the sense of closure that came with bin Laden's death in the chapter of 9/11 history (Spiegel noted that the film fed some moviegoers' "hunger to see" the actual killing of bin Laden) wasn't just what made Zero Dark Thirty a must-see film. Bigelow's action drama, which stars Oscar nominee Jessica Chastain as a CIA operative relentlessly tracking down bin Laden, has been plagued by controversy. (The film has been under investigation by the Pentagon and the Senate Intelligence Committee.) Those very discussions allowed moviegoers and critics alike to face big, if not unanswered questions. As Spiegel puts it, "Movies about subjects like this are quite preoccupied with questions: Who is the enemy and who are we?"
Author, theorist, and chair of the Philosophy of Education in the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA, Douglas Kellner, who had a hard time getting past the torture sequences and calls the film a "very uncomfortable experience," says that unlike the Vietnam War era — which had "very little footage of the war and it usually came in days after the event" — this post-9/11 world consumes media differently. "All the media, cable news channels, the Internet, blogging, YouTube — [with] all of this media talking about current politics, there's just mega-interest in contemporary history and people knowing about these events like the killing of bin Laden," Kellner says.
NEXT: Are the torture scenes too soon or just too much?
"I think audiences want contemporary history, whether its political or social. I think people are ready," Kellner adds. "They see so much through the Internet and television and social networking that they're ready for Hollywood to jump right in. I think people are intrinsically patriotic, but if you overdo it and sentimentalize it, it's corny. However, if you do it well ... it definitely works."
Don Mann, a former Seal Team Six member and training officer and author of books like Inside Seal Team Six and the recently released Hunt the Scorpion, loved the film and praises it for allowing the public to see what Seam Team Six is like without putting the team's identity in harm's way. Mann appreciates that Zero Dark Thirty gives viewers an unprecedented look into government and armed forces, particularly the CIA and the SEALs. "I really thought for a Hollywood movie, and we've had some pretty bad Hollywood SEAL movies like Navy Seal, they did an incredible job," Mann says before adding, like so many others, "Except for those torture scenes."
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According to Mann, the brutal scenes were "grossly over-exaggerated." And those scenes are hindering some audience members' ability to truly enjoy the film. "There's still a debate going on about torture and about how to deal with terrorism," Kellner says, echoing Spiegel, who says, "The representation of the torture raised questions for me"). So while Zero Dark Thirty may have avoided the post-9/11 pitfall of feeling "too soon," perhaps the open wound of the topic of torture didn't. How do we come to terms with that dark page that is still very much open? (Not being able to answer that question, or not providing an easy answer for it, could explain Bigelow's otherwise inexplicable Best Director snub).
Still, if anything, that raging debate and those very moral questions that it has raised has only made Zero Dark Thirty the water cooler film it's become. "Like they say, there's no such thing as bad press, and it's pretty much true, particularly in this case," Dergarabedian points out. "At the end of the day, the numbers don't lie and the fact that a movie based on this subject matter is doing so well proves not only what an important movie it is, but what a good movie it is."
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[Photo Credits: Columbia Pictures]
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